Thirteen years

Thirteen years ago today, my mother lost her life to ovarian cancer. I was seventeen, a few months shy of eighteen.

Her life had not been easy. It made my life not easy. My sole purpose had been to get her to love me back. I knew she loved me of course, kind of... But I rarely felt it.

So when she died, Chance died.  I was this ghostsoulthing that still somehow had a body.

For a long time, I knew nothing but two extremes: numbness or pain. I patched a new life out of friends, community college, underage drinking, smoking, and eating junk.

My life in the last thirteen years has consisted of a chain of major relationships, with little more than a couple months in between. Even though my mother was dead, my sole purpose remained fairly fixed: to be someone that other would love. What I wasn't aware of was a silent add on: " ... At any cost."

That add on phrase is no longer silent to my awareness. It's danger is clear to me now. And on the anniversary of my mom's death, I'm mourning the consequences of that danger come to manifestation with a connected awareness I've never had before.

It only took thirteen years and losing the most important people in my life four times to freaking get what I've been doing.

I'm tired of getting myself into these situations. My heart is getting too weary and I'm getting too old for this shit in this brief existence.

So, I'm going upstream to do a code rewrite. I'm letting go of the purpose that didn't serve well. Laying it to rest next to my mother and the others.

I hope that having the awareness will make the next generation code better than its unintentional predecessor.

Choosing Me, Delving Deep

1. Why did I choose me over us/him?

The tipping point - I developed an emotionally intimate, potentially romantic connection with another person other than him. Why? Why would I do that? How could that have been possible?

I realized it's because something profound was missing between us, and had been a core major source of my sudden anxiety attacks. So what was missing? Emotional intimacy, truth, acceptance. I did not fully understand this until much unfolding and validation.

Then I asked, why had that happened if we loved each other so very much? Was it because I had not discussed it with him? No, that wasn't it. We'd discussed ad nauseum. Over 5 years. It was that as a result of those discussion I compromised something I had no clear awareness was super critical to me. Emotional intimacy, truth, acceptance -- all of that equates to meaning. Devoid of meaning, I was out of alignment with my purpose. Things felt off and I couldn't really dial it in.

Well, if it was my purpose, then why couldn't I figure it out? Because, I've neglected myself in favor of others my entire life. Never really granting myself permission to be myself nor explored who that was. As an empath, this combination destroys, smothers out any semblance of chance I have at being Chance, knowing her. If I don't know her, how can I be the best person? The lover, the supporter, the friend, the awesome human I want to be?

Matched with my deep love for him and his resistance to compromise from his side, I'd continue compromising and smothering myself in endless pursuit for external fulfillment that would never come, with meaning muted too low to nourish my parched roots.

2. What's really working in life?

These all work some of the time, especially if I can muster the energy:

Writing
Deep, analysis/solution based thinking
Reaching out to mentors and friends
Honesty
Bravery
Speaking out
Focusing on myself and the connections that support my journey and success
Therapy
Music
Yoga
Hiking
ASMR videos
Learning more (about self, others, things)
Reading up on the topic
Trying out new things
Self compassion
Anything that helps me accept myself

3. What's not really working and how would I like it to be different?

Oversnacking, an old habit
Deep, destructive thinking
Overreliance on others (including my ex)
Self harm

As for how I'd like it to be different - I'd want to be stronger and find other ways to soothe myself when it feels like everything but suicide.

4. Who is the most important person in my life? If not me, why? Am I willing to make it me?

It has rarely been me. Because I was brought up to believe that I do not matter, that I'm not worth the affection, love, effort. Then I went on to relationships and life situations that perpetuated that, let me rest my pain in those connections, rather than heal them.

But that's what this journey is about. Radical shifting to self nurturing which feels wrong and selfish, but I'm ignoring that for now.

5. What do I need more of?

Everything in #2, more exploration, slow development of healthy relationships

6. What could get in the way? What do I need to say no to?

Hasty decisions around relationships
Long term romantic relationships (for now)
Impulsive things like retail therapy, too much food

Well meaning folks & self scalping for survival

Well meaning folks don't know better. 

Think bad thoughts? Just say fuck you and think good thoughts. It's not as though I don't already use this technique. But sometimes that switch does not work. Sometimes yoga doesn't work. Music. Writing. Errand running. Distraction. 

Like today.

I am burning alive, completely on fire. 

And - true to rule # 2 - no one and nothing cares. 

No one can or wants to be with me while I burn. But I guess, they don't know. They don't hear me lay aside my pride to ask for their presence, like the therapist suggested. Because my own water supply just isn't enough today. And I am too much for everyone today. Too much. Always. 

And, because well meaning folks, they don't know better. And when the fire is raging, it's hard to find a voice loud enough to cry for help. Maybe I didn't ask for it right.

The only one calling me back is an IPA and the phone alarm I set for laundry.

That and the thoughts again - I am not worth it. I am not worth the effort. Who am I to deserve that kind of love or support? From them let alone myself? I was not meant for this.

I don't want to type the other thoughts. They make me want to seriously quit on normal life and check myself in somewhere with drugs that dull it all away.

I am my mother's daughter. But. I DON'T WANT TO QUIT. All threads to hang on to are fucking loose. So I'm scratching out clumps of my scalp and using my own hair. The blood makes it too slick to get a good grip though. I want to get through this.

Maybe I need to hit rock bottom like I did as a teenager. Then, I'll realize I am all I've got. I'm strong enough. Maybe stronger, when I think about it. I've lived through fucking hell, through looking at the edge too sharp to be that close to flesh.

If I did it at 16, I can do it again, but fucking better - hell maybe this time I don't need to hit the bottom. I just need to hit myself in the temple and remember how much shit I've gone through.

Grief & the Expectation to Look Like an Ass

Grief. Five letters seem an inadequate capsule for the experience.

My life has become a strange desert. The surface of Mars, maybe. Full of echoes, ghosts, intermittent sandstorms.

Is there beauty or life left in her? I wonder. I feel doubtful but the circle of love around me is vehement, "No, Chancey. You're just hallucinating right now. There is no desert. No barrenness of which you speak."

I throw rocks at the love. Kick sand at it. No way. Can't possibly. Full of shit. Or pity for a lost cause.

Then, the bitch comes in. Hey fuckface - your self doubt, hate, deprecation, absorption make me SICK. Seriously, get over your damn self. For fuck's sake. Do you think you're in some unique situation? NO. Millions have survived.

Then I get numb. The only thing piercing the numb is a raging appetite and womb ready to end this endometrium's entire LIFE.

I must figure out how to survive. Because once I do, the desert hallucination passes. Life and love and passion and joy will be accessible. I'm not naive enough to think I'll be hunky dory, that my predisposition to depression and anxiety will magically dissolve. BUT - there will be more balance rather than this rabid wild thing called emotion dragging me behind it.

I will establish an anchor and domesticate, refine.

Find or create a core of power.

I can't expect grace over night. I can expect to look like a complete ass and the weakest, most embarrassing human on the planet as I go.

I must trust in myself. My decisions and instinct. Don't overthink it. Just go through it. Hit the underthink edge a few times, learn, nod, and commit to memory until it becomes easy to do, eyes closed. Get deft as FUCK at navigating that, and the rest will follow.

Nothingashes or universe

The neighbor has dominated the laundry room this evening. Looks like laundry day is delayed yet another day.

Another day.

A day later, the life-ending mindgames have de-escalated. Trapped banshee howl to sleepy mumble. Distracting but far easier to let pass without a flinch.

Hard to believe how quickly pretend normal took over.

My skin escaped the hours long attack relatively unscathed. But maiming imagery in my head belongs to a true crime file. Bruised viscera, bleeding wounds, and exposed bone everywhere.

I exist under a glossy novacaine clearcoat. I feel my face smile at people, hear my voice reflex respond to the people around me. I dress the part. Even act the part.

My diligence forging sanity in the work related insanity around me doubles as sympathetic magic for the work I'm doing at the soul level. Yesterday, I was subject to the shitty code of my own legacy programming.

I am not 100% happy with my choices at the moment. My confidence has wavered after last night. But maybe that's because I've lost sight of "rule" 2 - no one gives a FUCK about me - and "rule" 3 - I'm what matters to me because I'm all I've got if no one gives a FUCK.

Losing him is like someone I love having died. Knowing I'm ultimately responsible for pulling the plug is devastating. Now we're both trying to breathe on our own. He seems to be beating the odds. I started promising enough but I'm struggling to make it.

Yesterday I flailed in angst to plug it all back in. The oxygen deprivation burned holes into my lungs and heart. All the poison and pain choked me up.

To no avail. He was not responsive. I was scared for my life. He promised to be there for me in emergencies, insisted I go to him, despite relationship status.

But through no fault of his own, he was not.

Maybe the message, my lesson here is just one in self sufficiency. I learned this lesson quite young being so underparented. But my coping strategies were all not all the best.

Now my situation may be giving my the opportunity to cope better, to grow stronger. The opportunity has come at great personal loss, risk, pain, and destruction. In my mind's eye, I'm looking in a mirror and seeing myself wrapped in nothing but nakedness and fire. The skin crisps and crackles in various spots, with burning embers spitting sparks through the charred cracks in my flesh.

No one wants to get close to an on-fire person.

My imagination wanders to a possible future state, where I've mastered the fire and all the burning embers become stars in a brand new internal universe and all lost sound finds a home to live, propogate, and evolve into song, story, and meaning.

I prefer that future to the other - burn and collapse into nothingashes.

Last night, I had the longest breakdown and crying jag I've ever had in my entire life. The only reprieve was a desperate visit to a friend's, but it came back as soon as I got home.

I cried for hours. I'm NOT suicidal but I've been bombarded by more suicidal thoughts in the past 24 hours than I've had in my life.

I called my ex. In a panicked plea. I can't promise him anything since I'm unstable as fuck. But he's the only one I can call for this stuff and promised to be there for emergencies like this.

He ended up not answering. My priority in his phone was too low to get through his night setting. We're fixed that in numb fashion this morning.

It's a relief. But at the same time I'm disgusted with my weakness right now. The suicidal thoughts. The levels of desperation and depression and panic.

I obviously survived, without him having to come over. If he had, there would have been no touching despite the bed to be physically held, but his presence would have calmed me.

It took a few more hours to wind myself up so tight, my body gave up in exhaustion.

I'm so tired. I feel like a migraine is going to whack me in the face sometime soon.

I'm just so fucking mentally and emotionally unwell right now. I'd call out but have two meetings to run.

The bad thoughts are around his judgement of my choices, the thought that he's gone forever/moved on, feeling torn between compromising myself and going back I'll equipped to save my spot or remaining committed to myself knowing he's already building something with intent to be romantic and long term so I'll be too late.

I don't want to put myself first. It's painful. Scary. Judged by the person I love more than anyone in the world because it hurts him so deeply.

He doesn't sound like he wants to be with me again anyway. He says I don't deserve him right now. But right now I want to figure it out in my own. That's not what makes me undeserving in his eyes - it's the idea of getting physical/sexual needs fulfilled by another.

I get that that's painful. It's painful for me thinking the same about him. Seeing the photo of him and that beautiful girl.

The thing is I can't have him wait around for this undetermined time while I figure stuff out. It's not fair. Also there are too many things he and I have to work though in ourselves and each other. Plus we have history that gets in the way of progress, at least for me.

So I chose the lesser of evils for a self discovery endeavor I feel immense guilt for even needing and choosing.


What it boils down to is yes, I seek out physical relief in the forms of various exercises, drinking alcohol weekly, and coming alone or with another.

The latter may not be traditionally healthy in my situation. But it works and I am extremely selective/careful about that, especially since physical is inextricably tied to emotions for me.

I think my period is coming. Because the level of anxiety attacks, suicidal thoughts, and non stop crying was too extreme to not be hormonally induced. I felt like a different person.

I am not sure how I'll make it today. I think I need to take a day off this week to recover.

Yoga tears

I fell apart doing hip openers and shavasana. I haven't stopped crying.

I miss him so much. Despite the painful parts, he loved me so well and so deeply, easily matching my intensity. I often think that kind of match for me will be hard, if not impossible to find again whenever I'm ready for another relationship.

"Our final embrace, you won't turn, I won't chase... "

"I'm sorry, baby. You were the sun and the moon to me. I'll never get over you, you'll never get over me."

I'm so so sad. We put our whole hearts and souls into each other. 

It hurts so badly.

Pathetic & who cares

It's quiet inside today. Gray overcast seems to muffle things outside to soft humming. The lone exception being the woman digging through the garbage, having a rowdy conversation with another woman digging in bins across the way, playing a music box she just found. 

I'm sitting here in a towel because I'm too lazy to get dressed after my shower. I'm posthungover from a wonderful night with a good friend.

I'm alone now. It feels weird. There is dull tension in my chest, as if to ponder, "Does this feel good? Or is this awful?" I'd venture with the three people I now seem to be simultaneously, it's likely both.

I emailed him today to ask him where the SD card is with all of our pictures and videos on it. He has not replied yet. He said he'd quit computers, that he was addicted and it led down our path to ruin. I see its contribution but am unsure of its weight in our breakup.

Anyway, if he vastly reduced his computer usage or connectivity through electronics, then I'll probably be waiting a while. 

That's not the only thing I emailed him today. I have achings to be with him again. The lure of his impassioned promises feed my malnourished emotional bank. I told him I miss him. That I love him. That I do contend with these urges to be with him again right now rather than wait. I nearly caved and called him in a particularly horrific 5 minute period of time today.

It's really, really bad.

• Chewed cuticles
• Excess snackings 
• Urges to indulge retail therapy (which I have given in to more than I'd prefer - and while most are justifiably "needed" items, a few have not been)
• Crying uncontrollably
• Alcohol consumption increase (I'm kind of okay with this one since I don't often have more than 1 a day)
• Depression
• Anxiety so bad it's physical
• Stress induced acne
• Less professional than I prefer to be
• Difficulty focusing

I'm intermittently numbed out beyond capacity which makes it difficult to get consistently excited or joyful for what IS going well. Fortunately I do have good friends and family and some interesting development with my career to grant me reprieve. They bring balance to my life and help me restore my focus.

My brother's birthday is Monday. I spoke with him this morning before he headed to bed for the day. He seemed so distant from me. I'm worried I let too much time pass between visits and that he resents me. His schedule flip flop of daysleeping and night wakefulness is worrisome too though not unexpected entering summer months.

I plan to stop by nonetheless, fears and all. My Pop agreed to accompany me to the Filipino bakery to get some birthday treats. He's a sweetie.

Suddenly, I'm being hit with a wave of exhaustion, like a brick to my chest. My head feels heavy.

This is all so pathetic. 

I don't think I care enough though and I'm nice enough to myself now to know it's okay that I'm not adulting as well as I have or could when feeling the equivalent grief to that of someone close dying.

Good or not

I am at least three people right now.

Person one pines and begs that I return to him right now. "It's not too late. It's been a short enough time that if I called, he'd be open to working on all the things he said he would. Maybe he could remain patient while I figured out this self stuff. The love is SO good. So special. Don't let it go."

Person two, assures I'm on the right path and recommends patience. "This is 100%  necessary. If it is meant to be, he and our situations will be ready to try again in the end. Focus. The sooner I get through it, the sooner I move to answers and living life and loving as a better person. Stay strong. There is selflessness in this selfishness."

The third is the beginning of who I am to become. I can't quite make out her words yet. She urges I don't sink back into being person one, suggesting like person two, that this IS the way back to healthy love that doesn't require me to be a detriment to myself. 

Life is messy. I vacillate from hope and excitement for the future to deep urges to pick up the phone tell him I'll commit to him this early on. It takes every fiber of my being to say "no", like a true addict.

He promised he'd do anything and everything for me. Change. Even marry me. I believe he believes that. The offer was huge, beautiful, everything I pined and dreamed for in 5 years. I said no, and now I've broken two hearts - the heart of a beautiful, loving man and the heart of a woman too incomplete to bear.

I'm not sure I'm a good person. Formerly my schema for a "good person" did not include crushing hearts and declining love. This means one of two things MUST occur: I adapt the good person schema with the lessons I'm learning knowing my intentions OR I accept I am not a good person at all. The latter sends me into the familiar spiral of hating myself - which is truly unproductive and self-absorbed in the most negative of ways.

I've never been stronger.

But I've never been weaker.

Between work, friends, music, reading, writing, driving around alone, and compulsive self development, I sit in this massive pool of grief. Now that we're really cut off, it's fucking intense. I haven't known such core crushing sadness since my mom died.

It's smile. Laugh. No filter. Anxiety attack. Drained. No filter. Laugh. Ugly cry and sob hysterically. Numbnumbnumb. Serious

I miss him. I love him.

My head hurts.

Three rules

Woke to 4:30 AM ringing in my ear. First thoughts were, "This is the day. Don't you fucking do it. Just get the fuck up. Fuck everything. GET. UP. YOU. WHORE."

I did. 

Stared my stress induced acne-marred face in the eye. "I don't care." 

Popped in contacts. "You're fine. Because you don't care."

Slipped on the yoga pants. "It's awful but you're still alive."

Shirt. "Fuck it."

Socks. One inside out. "Who gives a fuck."

Strapped my mobile phone to my arm like a gun. "Yes. You pathetic piece of shit."

Hooked the earbuds into my ears. "That's more like it, bitch. IV the loudest, fucking electronic station into your stupid, beautiful, fucking skull. You hear me!?"

I did.

Then, I ran. I kept running. 10 minute mile. Maybe less. My best one yet.

It pleases me. And yet it doesn't matter.

Today is the day. Finality rings louder than the alarm. 

As I sit in evaporating sweat, here to write whatever comes to mind, the rules come to mind.

What rules? More principles. But I am going to think of them as rules. It's survival, you understand.

I've been asked to contemplate. These rules are bullshit. Because absolutism is bullshit. 

But, absolutes are talismans. Tools to projectile me out of muddy empathy, emotion, uncertainty, duress. The rules I was given are:

Rule 1 - You're a whore.

"Are you a high priced whore? Or a cheap whore?"

Rule 2 - No ONE gives a fuck about you.

"Who the fuck cares? No one. What matters to them is THEM. So I ask again - why DO YOU care so fucking much? Think about it."

Rule 3 - You are ALL that fucking matters. You mean EVERYTHING.

"You ARE a THEM to them. What matters to YOU is YOU. Fuck 'em. Since you are all that matters. What the FUCK do YOU care about? Really, really?"

See? All lies. Incomplete. Totally stark. Skeleton without flesh. 

But it's all true. For every single human that pops out of a womb somewhere. 

I want to be a high priced whore.

I want to give a HUGE fuck about LIFE.
Transcend a legacy because I'm strong enough to see it for what it is and call it unacceptable for me. Then, create a new one from the raw, untouched path before me.

Eke out an existence - not out of some exciting adventurism (although, I can wear that filter for limited periods) - but out of pure necessity. This is required to live.

Anything else is NOT living. NOT living = dead/might as well be dead.

Survival. My depression near suicide years ago taught me the same thing. If nothing about me matters, I can DO anything.

It's freeing. It is life. I found it again.

And why the FUCK would I waste life?

Fun with hormonal surges and the spectrum of life

I wasn't sure I wanted to keep writing here - and I may stop and find another place to do this.

Shawn told me he has shown it to others. That they judged my choices in the most negative light. That I'm doing the wrong things. Friends old, or new, shared or not, I'm not sure. I suppose it does not matter. They know only a % of HALF of the equation. And as friend to the man I've put in such misery and pain, they really should be doing and saying whatever they can to support him and his healing with whatever information they've got.

And they are right about the selfishness. I am a malnourished soul/mind who has finally, become self aware enough to understand dramatic change is necessary. Tectonic shift to make way for something so long neglected. I struggle calling this selfishness self nurture and care when I see the wounds it causes.

This is battle between the old and the to be. The casualty I grieve most is Shawn. And at times, the old Chance.

I feel ill today. In the past I would have chucked this up to my brand of insanity just digging its claws into my prefrontal cortex (fucking right between the eyes) and my heart. Maybe that is true.

But after a long, emotional Father's Day weekend, I invited myself over to a friend's where I ramblestumbled into the realization my hormones have gone out of whack. I should have known with the trend I've seen in the past 48+ hours - uptick in anxiety, panic, anger; voracious appetite - for chocolate/mindless snacking; bad headaches; and my skin reverting to that of a brain chemistry afflicted teenager.

I'm ever grateful to my friend, and not just for yesterday.

He's been an amazing support through all of this - I worry, to his detriment from time to time. I've certainly had good people in my life but I have held nearly every one of them at arm's length.

It's rare to let others into the Chancebubble.

But, he's been so extraordinary in providing safe and accepting space for me - to the point that the level of intimacy verges into a territory I'd reserved for my partners or very best friends (the former of which I do not have/am not in a condition to have and the other questionable).

He has been patient. Never overbearing about "coming in", just expressive, clear, gentle. He's like the Chance Whisperer and somehow traversed the bubble barrier without setting off my epic alarm system.

I can tell him - I think I have in various ways - but he will never grasp how powerful or remarkable he's been or what a feat it is to get through the way he has without being eaten alive or sonic boomed into mountain rock.

I will never be able to repay him and I'm not sure I have much in offering anything comparable back. But I have grown to call and think of him as a real friend. When people make it to that tier in my life, I there for them, always, as loving as I can be in the way they need - gentle to brutal, so long as I'm not in peril myself.

I see various experience types in life as belonging to these spectrums of possibilities and degrees. His Chance Whispering abilities - combined with two other mentors, a therapist, a book, and my own relentless determination have helped me see new degrees of those possibilities.

One such spectrum starts in my childhood. My roots took hold in dismissive soil comprising rejection, dismissiveness, shame, emotional abuse - all repressing or murdering self-expression and joy. I write this not to wallow in the negativity and baggage, but to help release my grip.

Because that baggage has no place where I'm going.

Since my childhood, I've ventured out, drawn to people who took me down the experience spectrum where these things grew less in severity. Until I started seeing things like acceptance, love, caring, appreciation, joy.

But still, I unconsciously gravitated toward people and situations that, when combined with my combo of experiences, personality, and brains - still kept me too heavily weighted on one spectrum to truly uproot myself from the past.

General depression/anxiety and mood disorder doesn't make it any easier, either. A fact of which to be aware, not a pity party.

As linear as the spectrum analogy sounds, my progress is so cyclical, albeit at least in a general direction.

I cycle. From strong to weak, weak back to strong, over and over. Every time I cycle back through weak, the old judgment creeps back. If I let it in, I maul myself. Savagely.

But I've gotten better. Way better. I pull myself back, reserve the my urges to perpetuate the attacking I learned as a child. As I grow, it's easier to observe the judgement, dismiss IT instead of myself, and allow compassion for myself until I cycle back toward strong again.

I don't always succeed or do so gracefully. Normal hormonal flux in my literal menstrual cycle always make me prone to relapses in to the depression, mood, and panic issues I already contend with.

Anyway, ,y friend saw this struggle last night (probably at other times too, since I'm pretty transparent with folks I trust). So far he's still there. Just patient. Accepting. Gentle. Smiling.

Not a crutch. An encouraging, positive force, for at least this part of my journey. I keep checking in about that too. Because I don't want to end up where I began.

Combined, these people and efforts are like a cast holding, embracing a broken limb to encourage the bones to mend as straight as possible. I tell Shawn it's like I am this half person and my relationship with him as good as it was at its best, was like a growth inhibitor for me. No one's "fault" - just a shitty reality of our particular combination.

I'm sad that Shawn could not be a part of that at this point in the journey. I'm not sure he will ever understand nor any of his supporters he might be sharing this with. But none of that matters now. I'm going to accept that and let it go.

Trigger Warning & Ultimatum

On Sunday he gave me an ultimatum.

To remain faithful to him. Re-establish some form of US.

I had told him I missed him. Missed us. What we used to be.

It's true. I still love him so much. He's a good man in so many ways. Will be for who ever he ends up with.

But he repeatedly called me selfish and evil. Boiling the conflict down to monogamy despite us being broken up. He repeated that I'm leaving him to "get more dick."

No. Fuck that nonsense. But, I know why he says that. I know he focuses on this one possibility because - outside of the breakup itself - the idea of me being intimate with anyone other than him now is painful. It's interpreted as a threat. To his security, his sense manhood. Humanness.

But it's NOT about that or even him directly.

It's about me. I don't know if he gets that. I am not sure I expect him to at this point. Maybe it isn't even fair to expect he could really, knowing how much we love each other.

Him calling me selfish and evil for my choice to pursue myself is a knife in my soul, slicing through my deepest of vulnerabilities. I'd always thought pursuing anything for me was deeply wrong. Stupid. Pointless. Selfish. Worthless. "Like me."

It triggered all of the old tapes to play at once in the grandest of orchestra. It brought me to my knees over a lake of fire. I was ready to throw myself in.

"I can't."
"I don't want to live anymore."
"Please come over and end it. End it for me."
"Kill me."
"I want to be dead."


"You will never find a guy who will treat you 99.9% as well as I have. You will regret this for the rest of your life. I won't be here for you again. You made this choice. NOT me."

Translation - You fucked up. You are not lovable and you are not worth pursuing this identity search. You are responsible for my choice to close you off forever.

I recognize that I am making the most adult decision I've made in my life.

He is asking me to compromise it, try another route that seems least likely to support my goal, and all because he thinks I'm out fucking other people. Or one other person. Either way. It isn't about fucking or sex.

It's about discovery. He can't understand it. I've tried. It was so important to me that he understand it. But I'm so traumatized by my suicidal scare, I don't know that I have the energy to care about that or consider other paths other than those that are most supportive and protective of my soul.

Because I do want to live. I want to survive. Then, thrive and kick ass.

Queen replaces king

Just like that, the new bed is here in the space. The space is the same. But it looks massive.

The mattress is softer. Yielding. Warm. Embracing my body. Queen replaces king.

It's strange to feel so heavy with sadness yet bursting with potential energy. Deep, dark, the air seems pregnant, waiting.

She's smiling. I know this. Even though I can't see or touch her. She's there. I feel. Sense her squatting, head down, thighs tensed. So kinetic. Snakey and springy. I wonder what she'll be like when she's here? If I'll like her. If anyone will like her.

But their preferences don't matter here anymore. I've got a big Fuck You cast hold me together until these soulbits finish transmuting all this life and death into some fucking amazing tapestry I dance with in the sunlight and wind.

Yes. Some day. And only I must like her. Love her with all the ferocity with which I love others.

The song on this playlist lets the truth in my heart come out to dance. I let it undulate its private show. Just for me, for now. Soft. Tentative. Tender. Vulnerable and a bit shamed and proud of how intense it feels to love, to care, to desire. It is the stuff that animals guard with all of the fight and flight.

It is also the stuff of amazing fucking beauty. I want to call it beautiful, give it room to breathe, uncoil like a bellydancers limbs revealing a body in glorious sensuality and richness. So I do.

The Bed

I'm waiting for this pang to die. A minor chord.

Steady bass and drum. Pang. Pang.

I don't tear at my leg skin. Crowded, ivory teeth gnaw slender fingertips, nibbling around long nail beds. "The best kind," every manicurist had ever told me, "you're lucky."

Another swig of liquid numb. Summer ale to wash down the ail.

Tonight is my last night in our bed. Well, his bed.

I contemplate slipping under the covers, moving fingers from an anxious mouth to the wetness beginning to burn where thighs meet.

It might ease the pain. One last time, for old time's sake.

But it remains unfolded and tucked in my head. A passing hiccup in a brain addled by the heart's burning.

I created something tonight for the first time in weeks. Washed the last of the king sized sheets save the set I'm sleeping on tonight. His towels sit in the dryer waiting for me to will myself off my ass.

I'm exhausted but I delay my body from sleep.

A part of me perks up. Tomorrow night, I sleep in the new bed. Selected without anyone's preferences in mind but my own.

Maybe it'll be okay.

Alone is miles deep

Alone is miles deep.

My heart is a canyon of grief. 

There is a voice, a little girl whimpering. My ears shiver around her. Her pleas. The fire, she complains, is too hot. Her skin burns.

It's torture. I'll die, she stammers.

Another voice emerges, paperdry but trickling faster into the space left behind. Talks about befriending the fire. Fire breathing, she insists, is not only possible; it is inevitable.

It is in your blood to partner with fire, ancestral inheritance awakening.

Take it all inside. Let it burn away artifice. Clear way for the authentic. Make space for passion. The birth will be painful but joy is sure to follow.

The girl is screaming now, so loudly she's drawn blood, spewing from her tiny mouth. 

I hold her but I spare my energy. No assurances. I just let her bleed out.

The Broken Column

A heaviness draws my focus to the crown of my spinal column. Dense, like an embedded supermagnet drawn to the polar opposite on the other side of the planet.

Will she snap? I wonder.

I think of Frida's Broken Column.

Hugh MacLeod - From "Ignore Everybody"

"Plus a big idea will change you. Your friends may love you, but they may not want you to change. If you change, then their dynamic with you also changes. They might prefer things the way they are, that's how they love you - the way you are, not the way you may become.

Ergo, they might no have any incentive to see you change. If so, they will be resistant to anything that catalyzes it. That's human nature. And you would do the same, if the shoe were on the other foot."

Losing Hope

Nag champa burning amber and blue in the pre-summer air, a long lost sadness sifts upwards through the sands of memory.

Maybe 7 years or so ago, a friend of a friend lost enough hope to hang herself in a cramped closet.

She left behind a teenage daughter.

I remember walking through her apartment in the days following. The air lay upon our bodies like a water logged blanket. It was hard not to choke, even with all doors and windows open. The sounds from outside seemed muted even in the city.

We sat on the floor, lit a candle, and talked to her. I don't know if it was more for her or for my friend. But I do remember putting my heart into it. And comforting. In the loss of hope so painful, she felt in one, small but all encompassing moment, without another choice.

Hope is a powerful thing. When you have it, it can sustain you. When you lose it, it can defeat your very existence.

There are varying factors and a vast spectrum behind have and have none for hope.

I'm not sure why she enters my thoughts now. Or why she seems important to my "right brain". I never knew her, only of her. I knew her good friends whose spines sagged c-shaped after her death.

It's over/Vessel named Chance

It's over.

I think at least I was able to convey that this was not solely about all the things he/I/we did that resulted in the emotional disconnect. That was only a part. Catalystic.

The other is me.

I feel sapped of all soul. I have a few droplets left and I am hoping they are enough to seed and respawn some life in this vessel named Chance.

Fuck me fuck me fuck me

Maybe it's not a good idea that I read his blog and he reads mine. I question my goodness as a human being. I'm smashing his heart. And I am breaking my own.

I am a destroyer of love.

The loudest rock music. Pound it into my fucking bones. Beat me to a pulp. I sit here between cases, customer retention, defect digs, and process analysis wanting to destroy my own life. Nothing so morbid as suicide but to just chuck everything at the garbage bin and run away. Quit this job, this life, and move to another town.

Crazy talk.

I share the same wants. Monogamy. Possible marriage. Lifelong companionship. Emotional intimacy.

But I am this ugly shape. I'm hardly ready and I never knew it. I'm the thing that doesn't fit. I am trying to become. I am trying to figure things out - but he needs a best friend to support him. I can't be the best friend AND the love interest when I'm questioning the very nature of relationships and myself.

Fuck. What if this is the last time we are Chance and Shawn? I thought that we would be forever. 

I want to scream. I want to run. I want destroy. I'm not sure what this all is. I keep this mask on tight, burying myself in the work. It isn't for anybody else to hold other than me. I am responsible for my own feelings and emotions and choices.

I will be there to accept and live through the repercussions. 

My therapist and I speak about the need for finding myself. Empathy breather. Turn inward toward myself. Hold myself like a cast to let the broken bones knit and mend themselves back together or form new, stronger, structures. How can I love anyone when I'm this disjointed? Am I lovable? Am I worthy? Do I trust myself?

I want the answer to be yes to those things.

Valley of Corpus Callosum

Waiting for the brain pill and coffee river to trickle its magic between all my synaptic crevices. Welcome to Valley Corpus Callosum. Population: my agitated soul.

I've decided. Each day has a personality. I've been doing that lately. Personifying the inanimate and abstract. Isn't that the mark of a crazy person?

Today's personality is oxymoronic. As I lay in bed this morning, delaying my day - wondering whether I should leap up and seize life or say fuck this shit and wallow in it - I was aware of two opposing spirits: Primal Anxiety and Confidence that the storm around and inside of me is fine.

I am the most uncomfortable I've been in a long time. Downright disturbed, distraught, tortured. Upset that I don't have it in me to DO things the way I was before in work and personal life.

But.

I daresay, I am almost eagerly accepting that this turmoil is absolutely necessary and is only turmoil in a moment along a spectrum of evolution. I can't put my finger on anything solid. I try to hold aside the judgment for my current inability to perform as well outwardly as I was before this madness took hold. "Temporary and necessary," I repeat to myself.

My boss compared this evolution to a platyhelminthes - a bilateral type creature that propels its soft but flexible body around with little flappy wing things. It's not pretty to look at but it is an interim stage.

The funny part is - we're ALWAYS in an interim stage. There is never completion. Not until you're dead in the ground. But even higher level than that- evolution-wise, we are all just in bodies that represent one stage of development in a longer chain yet to manifest.

At the soul level, I am playthelminthes. Unpretty. More obviously interim than polished.

I feel absolutely useless. Unmotivated. Even hopeless. Everything I have been seems to have become limp or rotted or awkward to handle. Everything I am becoming is still too soft, too raw, and equally awkward to handle.

So much crazy in one little body and mind.

I am seeking the support I need and spending time alone. Allowing myself to cultivate Chance, whoever she is. Once I have the who, there will be the what. Then, the how. And once that process is completed, I will be independently grounded.

Another thing about me. Empathy. The lack of definition and the gigantic empathy that consumes my being - is a gift. I think it was forged in genetics and an ill suited environment. I hold space for those around me, keeping them safe and supported. In doing so, I often temporarily lose track of where I end and they begin. Their thoughts and feelings become my own, and so theirs to mine. It makes loving intense and passionate.

It also makes the quest for self and independence an uncomfortable one. I have to keep these relationships at arm's length while I further forge around the empathy.

I want to help. I want to listen. I want to use this gift. But I can't do that properly until I define me.

That sense of shared space and union I hold for others, I realize that to lose one's self in another is not actually a bad thing at all (despite how distasteful that is for some) - it's the nature of empathy. That redefinition around two is the beauty from which healing springs!

It's the post-space holding snapping back that suffers in my undeveloped sense of self. That's why I must dial it in. Why I must do this. I have to get that in check to fulfill my best in this short freaking life.

This kind of evolution is not important to some people. Some people are okay with being defined solely by their environment. I have been that person. My own reason was I am programmed to discount myself.

Now, though, I am aware such evolution IS important though to ME. And, what's more is, I'm finally recognizing that what is important to me IS NOT something to dismiss, criticize, shame, or destroy. It is something to pay attention to. Love and nourish, even if it doesn't look/feel/sound the same as someone else's that I admire or wish to be more like.

No, for the first time in my life, I genuinely wish to be more like me.

Identity

Identity is an abstract concept that is taken for granted, dismissed in the sunlight of solid nouns like people, landmarks, possessions, careers that shape and anchor us.

But identity is the foundation that gives all these nouns their life and meaning to aliveness. When identity is starved and/or underdeveloped, these things imbue no spirit or substance - because the spirit or substance inside lacks the cohesion necessary for that meaning to take root, propagate, and flourish.

Nothing nourishes. At least, nothing external in isolation. Not even the well meaning people in our lives.

It's a long road. Journey to the center of self. Pioneering into depths before untouched because of engaged shame, ridicule, and stigma.

There are no tour guides. No handbooks religious or scientific. No maps other than the ones I draw for myself.

It is foreboding and feels fatal. But pressing on is worth the the injury if it means intense, 3-D life. My existence is too brief and I've perpetuated neglect too long in this 3rd or so of life now passed.

The swim

"It was the last time we swam together and out into the open sea. Like always, we knew each stroke to the horizon was one we’d have to make back to the shore.

But something was very different about that day. Every time Anton tried to pull away, he found me right beside him. Until finally, the impossible happened.

It was the one moment in our lives that my brother was not as strong as he believed I was not as weak. It was the moment that made everything else possible.....

You want to know how I did it? This is how I did it: I never saved anything for the swim back." - Vincent in Gattaca

Orchestra of pain

I wanted to hurt myself yesterday.

I did not.

I like to think that is progress.

I can see the dark. And part of me does not want to stand anymore. I want it to envelope me so that I can't see, hear, feel anything.

If I have a soul, at least part of it is dying. Dissolving into particles that twist and scurry in the winds of panicked breath, a heartbeat tripping on its own feet, dizzy. My throat hurts. My head hurts. My chest hurts. My arms hurt. My legs. All of me.

This is too much to bear. I want to love and be loved. I want to be alive. I want contentedness to be punctuated by happiness and joy. Sunlight. Music. Laughter.

I want to lay in the grass staring up into a canopy of trees rustling in the breeze. One hand on my heart, one hand in theirs. Quiet. Smiling. ALIVE.

I am so far from this dream there is physical pain.

Orchestra of pain.

Vague war

There is a tremendous war inside of me.

I am tempted to destroy everything I know about Chance.
Good. Bad. Semi awkward. Embarrassing. Endearing. Obnoxious.

Then I'll throw my heart into a knapsack flung over my shoulder. To keep it from burning a hole through my spine which I need to stay standing.

In my fantasy, I just walk away. Toward a new life. In another place. Other people. Maybe become a hermit that wanders, a new brand my family has yet to produce. Slash and burn agriculture that shit.

But I'm startled at what interrupts my daydream.

I don't hate Chance enough to destroy her or what she's become. Actually, I am beginning to like her a little bit and at least accept her emotional and so called right brained ways. Even as she makes questionable choices. I've got to give her that space. That freedom to live and fail and love.

Willow & oak

These talks are useful in that they provide more information. 

These talks are draining in that they open up all the wounds. 

Also. Information.

A part of me wishes that I could just give him the answer he wants right now. Because I love him. I hurt for him. And frankly I've always been a lover, a pleaser, a caregiver, a gentle truth teller. 

The willow tree that bends herself into water for the winds.

That's what my mother told me, "Better to be a willow that bends in the wind than a rigid oak that snaps in the storm."

My hard lesson: Even willows can snap. If they bend long enough, far enough.

There is a sweet spot. A balance. Somewhere between willow and oak. He is more oak than willow. The oakiest oak. So I responded by being the willowiest willow. 

And now here we are.

I no longer wish to be so willowy. And while validation from interaction with others is pertinent to any human being's lifelong development of self (because that shit doesn't end until you're dead in the ground/urn), I no longer want to define myself in relation to others. It's difficult not to overstep there because we rely on the existence of others for our sense of relativity. Yet, it's unhealthy to compare one's self to another whose experiences and genetics are unique to them. It's so delicate finding that right line, right spot.

I know better now why it was so easy for me to wade into the deep end of letting others define me. That base definition never completed for me during formative years.

And then, I threw myself into situations that prevented me from completing it on my own. Until now. 

I am not saying that I didn't develop further or gain definition over time. I've only inadvertently hindered it.

So, here I sit. Typing away into this screen. Thinking about the walk I want to take. The art I want to make. The space I want to create. 

I'll start by going to see if the lake isn't too crowded for a jog/walk.

Dying

I'm dying tonight. All the words. The promises.

Too tired to fight.

My heart is breaking. What do I do?

My stomach is twisted.

I fell asleep for an hour. From the talk and a beer. Woke to an email storm and an old photo of me, bare breasted. It doesn't even look like me anymore.

But the eyes are the same. Just younger.

Why does it have to be right now? Yes or no? 

"Let it come and let it be."

"Let it come and let it be."

I've grown too much anger in the garden to want to return with any certainty.

I wasn't sure where it came from, but it is rampant here.

I  didn't call it a weed. I can't bring myself to call it that because all emotions in the garden are relevant. They have voices and personalities. They tell stories. They are all alive and worthy of knowing - even the difficult ones.

I am basking in the wandering. A necessary distraction and cautiously accepted unrooting that will ironically bring me focus, clarity.

Each day, the self doubt persists, but my belief in its validity increasingly wanes, replaced with a compassion and understanding that trumps all else.

There's that ex-shaman voice, playing again. She says:

"Show yourself the compassion you show others. Your capacity to love is powerful. Be a lover to yourself, as you would to those you care deeply about. There is beauty in your humanity. You often deny yourself the gift you give others. Care deeply about yourself.."

So heavy

It's so heavy.
I want to hermit away.
But I can't lift myself today.
This is much too big for me.

"You can do it, little one. Shhhh. Take your time. You will one day run wild on beachsand at night, lighting your trail with fire and flickers and orange from your very own torch."

Try Me

That's the third person to name me an emerging butterfly.

Cliche - but cliches hold because they are power. Archetypal.

I exist between two selves. Floating, head turned to one side, eyes seeing everything, comprehending only a drop in infinite ocean. Armspan stretched, fingertips brushing the old dimension and the new. No ground to traverse - everything here takes flight, propelled by their own lifeforces across expanse.

Two realms at my hands. I'm in a third space. Undefined. I could break apart at any moment.

I am so frightened, so vulnerable out here. I can see the stars being born. It brings tears to my eyes. Maybe they fall, crystallize and become part of the new universe here, in the third space.

There is a voice in my head that tells me my fragility and fear are strengths. That they are the capacity for creation and bravery. I want to cry because I never believed that to be true. That I was worthy of such beauty, and life.

 Inherited thought prisons latticed in to my heart, around my throat, like:

• My voice is not important because.....
• I have nothing of worth to share or say. 
• I have no story or substance. 
• I may as well have never been born.
• I barely exist.
• I am unwanted here.
• So I want to be dead somehow. 
• I am a violation of space, of humanity. 
• I am a mistake, therefore I am invalid.

I  am so scared. I write. So much fear. I listen. I fight to survive. To make it to the other side. I am not graceful or artistic about it.

I'm unrefined, wild, and unbalanced but I try to take it back to patience, self love, compassion, acknowledgment, safe space for the little girl who never knew these things.

Maybe there is a beauty in the wobble and the wild. Maybe I can embrace her in this third space, lavish her in kisses, tell her how precious she is, encourage her to put effort and heart into everything she does because even though she's afraid, every one of us is. Normalize her human condition so it becomes integrated instead of something distasteful to resist or shame.

"Try me", said the disc. I'm trying.

Generate

"All of the love we generate, the only thing that carries me on. There's nothing we need that it can't create."

The past week feels like a month.

I am ever hopeful that the aging I've felt in that time isn't showing on my face, weighing on my posture too obviously. I have been lucky to have loving and consistent support. I did not expect it. Even though I have also intentionally reached out for it, my past primes me to expect no response. Rest in peace, Mom. Rest in peace, past.

My friend of the past 20 or so years went home today. I dropped her off at the terminal, grateful and sad. We are still soul sisters. I think we will be until we die. INFJ power all the way.

Life is funny. You create more of it than you believe you do.

Yet.

At the same time, I feel very beckoned.  Like I'm following.....something. Nothing sinister. There's a force gently tugging at me. I feel it in my heart and solar plexus. Fate and destiny. These things are awkward in my hands and mindspace. Like sand in your shoe. It doesn't feel quite right to accept.

But I trust that gentle nudge and tug into the dark, the difficult, the discomfort. The disturbance buzzes around me like a bee swarm, invoking waves of doubt, fear, thrill, life. Like a sleeping limb waking. I shake it off. Breathe. Hopeful to find restored circulation and new normalcy. Fresh blood feeding into parts of me I've neglected.

Neglect. There's that word again. My mother taught me well. Poor Mama. I feel for her even in death.

The ex-shaman in me awakens. "Never really died - just hibernating. It's spring again. Bitches. And this spring, more than flowers at your desk bloom. Let the flower in your soul see sun and water and air and love. Talk to it. Pay attention. Caress the green and stem and petal. Do you smell that? It's the perfume of life blossoming into your being. Let it envelope you, hold you. Then, you can hold others. Hold a space. Safe, shifting letters in scared to sacred. This is your place. Create it."

Nothing casual about casualties

I disrupt us. The foundation.

The ground sloughs off the face of the planet in fragments, powdering between our toes. The river of time, once rushing, pours like honey in the chill.

The landscape of our love is in upheaval. Physics stretches, warps. We float as the terrain crumbles, untethered. I wonder what will happen if we float so high, we hit the edge of ozone. Does everything dissolve? Do we survive the lift in to outerspace? 

Our fingers out of reach, you're screaming for me, like I did on the river. Your twisted expression, fearful, angry, it hurts my heart. But I can't hear the words. The volume knob of our world stuck to mute. 

Gravity defied, I'm high above it, the carcass. Now the question is, does the carcass nourish an evolved iteration? Better than the last, stronger than ever? Hand in hand? 

Or does it break, branch off in another genus?

I love you. I don't know how to solve the disconnect. My eyes rain to the destruction below. I have never wanted to communicate with you so badly - and not at all. The opposing instincts battle. I can hardly stand it. There's nothing casual about the casualties that mount. 

What next, heart? What next?

The only response is a wordless song, slow, heavy with sad and wonder.

Cotton & touch

The afterburn decays. It's like drowning in cotton balls. My substance reduced to nothing but electronic trembles.

What embrace is there to hold these rudimentaries together? 

Trembles will have to do for now. I ache so bad. For care. Touch. 

His words buzz at me. Ants with doublecheckmarks means received, seen.

"Please, forget I said anything."

Listen to him this time, Brain. Don't forget, because it's impossible. But let it flow back in to the cotton nothingness.

I hold myself.

Touch my own body. Assured I exist.

I am here, for you, Self. You are safe. Sacred as those breaths you exchanged with all of those ancient Yosemite sequoias in the October overcast.

Dirty work & translations

Shhh. A whisper trickles down the side of her neck, a beckoning finger tracing. New domains. New rivers forming.

Synesthesia at its finest. Bite down. Don't peek.

But she must. 

What's under there? Before she knows it. Gust of wind, brief, sweet - almost confectionary. Everything shifts. This is what this space is for. Alone. Discovering. Asking the questions. Confronting answers.

It's dirty work.  You've got to poke. Dig. Move.

There's sweat involved.

Sticky. Heart pounding. Brow furrowing. Grime. Under shade, yet lit as sun. Full of sighs. Collapsing in on herself.

She likes some of it. She's scared of more of it. Too exposed there.

All these ancient feelings. Untranslated and lost. Swallow the fear and let it sit on the balcony of her throat.

Take a hit and pass, because it'll be here a while. Let the translation begin.

You were the sun and moon to me

They say the stomach shares brain power. That neuronal pathways literally line its composition. Ferrying mood and thought from root to tip of this body. 

That's why we feel it all over. Inside. Insight.

I try to think of the new space as canvas rather than of its pain. Post-destruction creation.

That does not mean it is not also pain and destruction. The power and strengths here do not discount the weight that brings me so often to the floor. Knees scratched, chest caved.

I suffocate. Watch the life drain.

I woke up to the sea of king sized bed. Squinting in the dark at the buzzing light in my electronics.

I see a post. "For a friend going through a hard time," he writes. I don't know if he means himself or me.

I click. And cry and cry and cry. I listen again. I cry and cry some more. I consider not living normal life today. My face is covered in saltwater. I may as well be swimming in the sea without a raft.

I realize I need this. I need this badly. To be alone. To muse. To synthesize. Orient. Appreciate. Learn.

But here comes the saltwater again, until it feels like I'm nothing but conduit for archetypal Heartbreak to manifest in to the real world temporarily through me, at 5:11 AM. 

It's raining, it's pouring
A black sky is falling, it's cold tonight
You gave me your answer
Goodbye, now I'm all on my own tonight
And when the big wheel starts to spin
You can never know the odds
If you don't play, you'll never win
We were in heaven you and I
When I lay with you and close my eyes
Our fingers touch the sky
I'm sorry baby
You were the sun and moon to me
I'll never get over you
You'll never get over me
I'm sorry baby
You were the sun and moon to me
I'll never get over you
You'll never get over me
When the big wheel starts to spin
You can never know the odds
If you don't play, you'll never win
We were in heaven you and I
When I lay with you and close my eyes
Our fingers touch the sky
I'm sorry baby
You were the sun and moon to me
I'll never get over you
You'll never get over me
I'm sorry baby
You were the sun and moon to me
I'll never get over you
You'll never get over me
You'll never get over me

Blurry

All of my edges blur. Goosebumps traced in bleeding watercolor. Deep, new colors, yet to be named and so hard to identify. How did outerspace make it into my earthling flesh?

"Because, my dear, an alien experience has touched you."

It makes no sense. Pure nonsense. A moth throws itself upon the mirror. If moths have hope, that one must be in panic.

Hands too shaky to hold, hunger hurts but starving works when it costs too much to love

He's packing. Right now.

I'm at work.

Before I left, we were talking. I paused to forcefeed myself. Styrofoam with marshmallow. Almond milk.

He began to pack.

In front of me.

I yelled at him. "Don't DO that shit in front of me! What the fuck! I don't want to SEE that. You can't WAIT until I just freaking leave?"Growly.

He cowered. Confused. "You're going to understand one day why I would not have known it wasn't okay to pack in front of you."

I think I do. And I don't like it. It's unfair. But this. This is what has always been the gap. Yet this has been the healthiest relationship either of us have been. Love. Communication. Effort. Investment. On this we agree.

I gave my boss the heads up. In case I go missing later today. I predict I lose focus now. But also around midday.

"He's packing right now."

".Right now, right now?.............Was it your choice?"

"....Kind of." Swallow. "No. Yes, it was."

"Does he not want to go?"

"No. He was.....'happy'. But yes, he does because he knows I want to be alone and doesn't want to be around that."

We talk through it some more. Just at the surface but her eyesight is keen enough to see the bottom from here somehow. She understands my situation more precisely than any of the three people I've divulged this information to. With the least detail.

She then shares a nearly identical scenario. Her thoughts, her behaviors during. I am floored at how far inside my brain she gets. She does have a degree in psychology, however. Maybe I should not be surprised.

I should be working by now. I only meant to type here prior to the start of my shift. That was 22 minutes ago now.

What is it that I want?

I want to be understood. To truly be known. To be loved. To understand, to know, to love.

I want to WANT and not NEED someone in my life.

I want to be whole and happy in standalone mode. I have not been happy in standalone. That is why I think most of this is just me, not him. I can't help but think of Fiona Apple, "But these hands are just too shaky to hold. Hunger hurts but starving works, when it costs too much to love."

Gone?

"I want to be alone."

My mouth moves. That's my voice. But I don't recognize it.

Maybe it's someone else, I say. Maybe it's outside, carried in through the windowscreen?

No. It is the bell that can't unring.

It makes no sense, does it? To be alone? I don't want it to be permanent but his mind sounds made up. He's always for absolutes. I've always been too soft, too undecided. An undefined being, defined by her surroundings. I judge myself unkindly. Then step back.

My eyes swell. Uterus spasms violently. I don't pray, but pray anyways that the Nyquil kicks in before the panic. Before the urges. Maybe it's just the hormones. Maybe my weight changes continue to fuck with me.

I back pedal. Plead. Wonder at myself. Am I slipping? Is this me?

I can't imagine what it'll be like. I'm too numb. Too shocked at my own voice. Too shocked at how willing he was to go.

I want to be around good people. But fear their judgment. I then imagine being truly all alone. I get fear. Cold. Numb. My eyes still burn but I think the Nyquil's setting. I welcome the burning numb to take it away.

Coming home to an empty place. Will that give me what I'm searching for? The clarity? The peace? Sense of solidity?

He deserves someone who is already those things, I assure myself. He keeps telling me it's he who will be fine. I think I've just killed us. Or irreparably damaged it. Some call that art. I recall some Asian practice of gluing back together broken pottery with gold laced resins. The effect was more brilliant than anything that had been made perfect the first time.

I tell myself this is why it's okay.

I still don't know that it is.

Die and thrive and die

I die.

Right now. Stunned in full blown consciousness, I experience the exquisite pain associated with each millisecond, existing through the drama. Depths I never wanted to see.

But no. "You wanted life, Chance. You got it. You knew this could happen. Be with it. Grow. Learn. Die. Hurt. Enjoy it. Even if that comes after the rest." 

Now I become.

Become what? Something ugly. Hard to hold or behold. My eyes still look like me. But so feral. What is that behind them? A fire? The universe exploding?

I come undone.

There is nothing beautiful left.  I hardly know if I can ravel it back in. Is it worth my time to fix me?

And I almost don't care. "You deserve this," it whispers. Narrow eyes in the dark.

Last night I dreamt of a wolf and a coyote. Their shadows against sidewalk under moonlight. Mama was there but only in disembodied voice, never in the same room, slow to respond.

I breathe. I need peace. Wisdom. Love. Clarity. Some twisted impossible mix of solid and fluid. Existing between absolutes. Living in the gray. Living in the colors, painted in joy, pain, laughter, sensuality, anger. Wilt, blossom all at the same time.

The soils of my planet know nothing of these things. Have no wherewithall to allow such puzzles to root down and thrive. 

Who the fuck knows.

Remembering Mama's Face (Old + Too many quantum physics late night documentary shows)

I have my mother's elbows and parts of her mind. My face moves like hers did sometimes. If I have her elbows and face does that mean she's moved inside of me somewhere?

They say that any dimension beyond our own three plus time is witnessed as movement occuring "inside" or "sucked in to itself," an infinity, a shadow of an extra dimesional reality more "real" than our own. I wonder if it's possible at all.

This face is her face. Her face is my face. Who did it belong to before? Who will it belong to again?

And here I thought no one looked as strange as/like me. But it's not me. That's the funniest part. My face is not me and I think that's why I disconnect so much from my outer appearance. But I think I need to start better appreciating the physical manifestation for what it's connected to in the divine. My face is equivalent to a sacred symbol, a talisman, an extension of the "big picture". Holographic, as it were, because this face IS the "big picture" miniaturized but perfect reflection nonetheless and vice versa.

Soul Retrieval (Old)

Dear Mama,

I don't believe in such things. Not for a long time. I believe we are born. We live (or something like it). Then, we die. End.

Then why? Why do you persist? Why do I feel like you are here? Sitting next to me on the way to work. Standing just out of sight on the other side of the full length mirror. Or sometimes staring back at me. I see you in those cheekbones, the way my upper lip thins and curls when I smile, or a specific stare I give.

You were my mom when you were alive. Now that she's dead, my psyche has replaced her with you, this projection, heavy, emotional, and tugging at me. The pull begs me, "Turn your head and look! Look into the periphery!" In fact, I can almost see you there. It's almost as if you're outside myself. I never give in because I know if I turn, I will lose the image.

But, then, I realize, it's all me. Just me doing the tugging at myself because I ache to turn my head and see you, some watchful mother from the great beyond. Then there's me again, resisting the tug, recognizing my poor, wounded psyche for what it is. It tries so hard to change the unchangeable, ill-guided strategy for mending the chasm left behind when death ripped you from me like a horrific accident severes limbs.

Poor, misguided, wounded soulbit. I imagine the damaged 17 year old in my mind splitting into two selves; damage grows younger, shrinking as she reverses in age and size. I, on the other side of the split grow older to my current age, looking down at her. She's so little. Head is 90% shining eyes that look so big and old and wise but clearly, too lost and ignorant to draw from that wisdom. She must be what all the shamans talk about when they embark on soul retrievals.

Well, since I'm writing, here's my attempt:

Dear Little Chancey,

I'm sorry you've been separated from yourself so long, little one. I see you there, shapeshifting into Mama's image, wanting to play with me. It's always been you, not her, hasn't it?

I don't remember exactly but, I think it's my fault. I accept it now. I shunned you, refused to face all the pain carried in your little form. I didn't mean to do that, or understand what it could mean to banish you. I just didn't want to look at it. You reminded me too much about the big, suffocating, burning things that paralyzed me when all I wanted to do was run and run and run. I wish I could just say it's a Western thing, but that's no excuse. I'd take it all back if I could. Please come back and I promise to be honest with you. Know that nothing I can do for you changes the unchangeable, that reversing your age doesn't reverse time or undo her cancer or her death. I'm sorry I couldn't/didn't take care of you. I'm sorry Mama is no longer here to take care of you. I will never be her but I will do my best to take care of you. Tomorrow, sometime around 8 PM, will be 10 years. Won't you please come back home? We can honor her together, in our own way, even if she can't hear us anymore. I miss you. And her. You are always welcome and loved.

Love,
Chance

Soulslaughter

Your eyes are drawing in to themselves. Like a mouth squinting at lemon sour.

I can't see you anymore.
"One foot out the door."
"I can't."
"I want to leave."

If I was self-centered, I'd wonder if this peril in love between us is why San Diego is uncharacteristically cold.

I'm patient. I'm tired. I'm aching. I'm yearning. Darts of longing pierce my lower belly, flame around the ribcage and curl back into heart.

You're fading. You're dying. I can see the dimness in your movements. I wonder if you were right about slow death. But I don't want you to be.

Maybe it's me.  She told me to stop "shoulding" all over myself. But maybe, I should be imprisoned for soulslaughter. I'm lost and want to find myself. I don't want to need someone for that.

How can something so beautiful shapeshift in to something so sad? I used to think neither of us were bad people, just flawed, human.

Why do I think it's me?

Maybe it is.

Maybe I am awful. No, I can't think this way. I'll never figure it out if I focus on destroying myself. Old habit.

Faded, fucked

Note to self: Don't listen to Fantasy Man by The Swell Season right now. It's just too much.

Another night in discomfort, pain, tears.

Death by a thousand papercuts. Weather is 100% chance of saltwater and rubbing alcohol.
I am reduced. Raw. A feral she-thing. Limbic and a pile of quivering. Throat sore from heavy howls I could scream in to the night. I could claw at my flesh until it bleeds, then claw some more. To the bone. I would know no better.

Faded. Lightweight. Is it healthy? Likely not - but I'm not looking for health right now. I just want to get through one more moment.

Truth is such a twat.

Convert that oxygen to carbon dioxide. Or as a wise friend said, metabolize. I take what I can get.

I try not to swelter in guilt. Shame for my voice. For honesty, no matter what. Integrity, I tell myself. Over and over. I am wiser than my 25 year old self. Even drowning in the pattern.

I am told I need to find ways out of my prisons.

"Something is wrong with me. I am bad. I don't deserve kindness/understanding for being so bad."

If I don't disentangle from it, I will never be receptive to my heart's wisdom. Figuring this out will be impossible.

He has a choice too. He can choose patience. He can choose to say, Fuck you I can't. And he'll have every right to say the latter. Every night he swirls in to the latter. I take it because I should. It's torture but so the fuck what.

Tell me why. he says. I tell him all the possible whys I've got. The repeats. It's nothing new, but nothing adds up. He protests. Claims censorship. Bites. Growls. I listen. I reason. Cry. Quietly reason. Cry some more. It's a wonder I still have eyes.

He doesn't get it. Not even the stuff on repeat.

As for this current state, neither of us does.

He's going "out" this weekend. Doesn't want to tell me. Of course that's fine. But it's different. I think of what I can do alone. Maybe figure some things out. Maybe do something solo I'd normally do with him or something I normally wouldn't do.

Pioneer archetype is looming again. Smirking. What an asshole, it is.

I want to be held. Why does that seem the desire? To hold the billion pieces together, to keep from coming totally apart because pain thrives in all the cracks. Grows between each shard with earnest. My capacity is ever greater than I expect.

I wonder how my mother would handle. She'd cave forever. She was one and done.

I cave a bit now. But only for now, I tell myself. I am not her. This too shall pass, in one way or another. We'll both be okay, with each other, without.

But fuck. The passing will be worse than a kidney stone.

-----

His eyes. So different. They used to look at me with so much love. All I see is pain. Glaring. Ice. They no longer hold me or caress me. That's one of the greatest losses in stripping naked for him to see, to listen.

Eyes no longer hold. The touch is gone and I'm reminded of my girlhood.

Fuck it

I'm not sure what's gone wrong. It's not just the wine fogging my mental faculties.

The talk tonight was big. Broke us in to a million stupid pieces. We sit in separate rooms. My hair is wet, lips stained with wine.

And tomorrow is Monday. I'll pretend everything is fine while I figure out what is next.

What happens when your future plan goes uncertain? You come too close to the mirage, see the asphalt burning for what it is.

I don't know I don't know. I keep telling him I don't know. Infuriating as that is. Through the open front door I see nothing but oily black and indigos. Faint shadows of the street.

Useless as my heart and brain right now. I do not enjoy helplessness. One path or another, there's direction in me somewhere. It is a necessity.

I used to write good shit when buzzed or drunk or in pain. Tonight it just blows.

Rambling and La Mesa Nights Nostalgia

There's more sunlight here than there was yesterday I found myself tapping away.

I've filled my first weekend back with running. To or from, I can't be sure. There is a shift inside and I am ill equipped with an experience comparison to project outcomes or trajectories.

Back on the river with no paddle.

I've let the right-brain impulses breathe a bit of freedom. Cautiously optimistic they may be on to something and that I should not lock them up so tight as I did. I try not to judge myself so harshly but old habits die hard. I only wanted to promote stability in my life and succeeded. Now I've got to remedy the byproduct staleness so I can grow.

Stale. Life and risk and soft exposed parts.I watch a worry fly by. Remain objective. Chance. Remain objective. Feel and let it pass.

A plastic bag drags itself across the ground grit outside. The scraping is rough in my ears between my teeth. Raw on my insides and heart. Remain objective. Let it happen, ease in to it. Don't resist.

I won't lie. I'm scared. The panic, sadness, guilt. The love. Anger. All of it engulfs me at the throat and makes my whole face hurt. The pain travels in to my forearms, my palms, buzzing at fingertips. My hands find their way between tapping to massage and encourage resistance to drop.

When I was 19, Micheal and I used to chainsmoke Misty Menthol 120s, drink vodka, and improv poetry into the uncaring night air. Occasionally, I'd be sober enough to get a notepad and pen so we could record some of it. Most of it was great. Some of it was shit. We loved it all.

We spent hours on his La Mesa patio, philosophizing, bullshitting, crying, laughing about our silly social circle dramas and lamenting about the world, fantasizing about socialism and a world that loved. We were two peas in a pod. Brother and sister from another mister. I miss that guy, those times. We are different people but I always look back fondly.

We never skipped our ritual. Not even for the California fires of 2003.

Different people. That was at least 2 mini lifetimes ago. Maybe 3 of this one is dying. We die many times during our lifetimes, the way I see it. I'm not sure this one is going to be easy.

Stream of Consciousness

What words belong? The blankness begs, a question nothing but loose change in a pocket. Obnoxious. Who uses anything but plastic rectangles and magstripes nowadays to pay their way?

Pay my way. 

How to pay back the neglect? 

Free it up. Don't dwell too long on a branch. It could snap and it's a long way down. I've left it in the nest too long, half-hatched. Wake up, muse. Flutter on, stretch your glorious limbs, lick your lips, and exhale.

I sit on this sofa. Shit from Jerome's, part of a living room set. An eager purchase to fill this blank room, 2 years ago. It caves strategically, whereever we plant our asses most. Warm amber glow from the included lamps.

I'm nestled in one of the sofa cave-ins, bare legs still soft from recent shave, bent knees-first into the arm supporting this dinosaur of a laptop, recently salvaged from failure city. I've said my "fuck you" to jeans, a careless crumple of denim litter on the floor. But I stopped there. Too lazy I guess to fuck off with the rest. 

This position would not have done too well 100 pounds ago. Now, I enjoy few things more than curling up whenever I can.

My phone rings alarm against the back of my thigh. So that's where it went. Time to take antibiotic.

I will shave again tonight, whatever the razor catches. Vanity doesn't drive the nightly ritual; sleep does. I don't sleep quite right if everything isn't smoothed down. 

Here I sit. In my nothing writing. Tapping away on a keyboard missing its "a" key. But maybe the insignificant trips up meaning later. Maybe tonight. Maybe next Friday. Maybe 3 weeks from today. I just remember, when I did this before. It came. Eventually.

Bjork.  I've got her competing with the tower fan right now. My can she be pretentious sometime. I don't care. I've got her Bastards album in consuming through the queue, misfit pieces that did not belong with the rest. 

But, her misfits are among my favorites in what I know of her work. It feels appropriate enough to break out in full span grin.

Suddenly, a conversation with my boss comes to mind. "No one is so special or unique. Everyone feels and thinks the dark things you do, you know." I could agree, almost fullheartedly. I'm not one for absolutes.

One, I wouldn't say "everyone" but "lots of folks." 

Two, I would say, "no one is so special or unique in their thoughts or emotions because we are all human."

Three, I would add about the dark things: "and each responds or interacts with those things differently, sometimes similarly, but ultimately unique to the sum of that individual's composition as driven by genetics, experiences, and current beliefs based on those experiences."

Some people are uncomfortable with the differences. So much, they fight wars, kill each other, oppress others. Justification is easier than confronting the discomfort that sits with us all.

Old Poetries

 

Old poetries....
Probing through my chest like sea anemones.
Love.
It's in pain, butterfly.
Just a friend, just ancient presenttimes,
arching across my mind.

Writing these letters like scattering ants carrying broken thoughts on fragmented backs. A lost organization, lost civilization, a feigned neatness. My eyes burn and my heart is meat sitting precariously close to a grinder.

I'd like to jump into the ocean. Lay with my head resting in her palm, legs dangling off her fingertips, fetal drift, nearer to the lung to go with the flow like I'm supposed to.

Flutter in abandoned hot and wet and throbbing and pulsing and sighing and shaking, collapsing and breaking so everything is alive again.

Then you cocoon me with your shushes and your whispers like mother's hands and give me lotus lilies to stand on. Sleep, tired baby, you say, you've been stressing much too long and worry pointless worries.

Wanderlust and Music Therapy

“I hand myself over to the music,” he wrote. 

You might use this trick often, if you were born with a hairtrigger scale. Music - like any art - can be as superficial or deep as you make it. I make it medicine. It’s the drug that helps turn spine to steel when dealing with life’s heaviness. Useful alchemy when all your fine-tuning efforts don’t seem effective enough alone. 

Maybe this emotional thing is a defect. Maybe it’s a blessing. Like most things, it depends on what you make it.

“I hand myself over to the music.”

The words cut a string invisible to the naked eye. There was a little shock, I shuddered, and a piece of self awareness broke the surface. I hung it out to dry in the sunlight and chewed the side of my thumb cuticle like my brain chews thoughts.

I run far more from the heavy than I’d care to admit.

I drive long distances to nowhere in particular. I grab a random to-do from mid-air and throw some clothes on, hurry out the door.

All for the unconscious therapy teasing me in the form of my car’s speakers blasting what I need into my ears - be it razors, ocean, bullets, ice, silk, canyons, sticks to break bones and remend in a fiery resurrection of some kind. Meanwhile, I get the Windex I think I need or browse the bookstore to thrust myself into a crowd of others looking to lose themselves in other people’s words.

Now that I’m a bit more aware of my behavior, the medicine seems to work better. I feel closer to whole, closer to solid and not quite so mercurial. There is nothing right or wrong, better or worse with your head in the clouds but a lifeline to the ground seems a healthy option for me.

It IS about control. Life seems unwieldy but if you’ve got some of your shit together, then you’ve got what you need to navigate with some dexterity. Sometimes the music helps carry the weight so that I can devote myself far more to living and less about worry, shame, fear, self-destruction.

Not the perfect solution but sure a lot closer to functionality than without.

Basketball

Right now, life is watching a basketball circling the rim. If breath had fingernails, it'd be gripping your thigh.

Dunk? No dunk?

Only time knows. I'm following it. Waiting to see. Are we really that temporary? Do I need to let go?Everything is temporary, even illusory.

But I'm talking about us. We. I can tell myself that forever is relative to my finite lifespan. It doesn't change the drumming beating my insides. To deny it would be a lie. I tried that once.

Yeah. Fuck that.

I acknowledge the truth, or the beginning of what I can see of it. In one dimension I scream and claw away all of my skin. In another I'm laughing and dancing.

It hurts. Always like fire. But I have few alternatives, because burning the other way is unacceptable.

I am small without all the weight. My hands find the ribs poking close to softness on the outside. Too soft. And all the hollows between. I don't know this person. I don't know what she is or if I even like her.

"You know, I never wanted to have children. Your father tricked me. I wanted to enjoy my life."
"Get the fuck out of here."
"Get out of the way."
"Leave me alone."
"You are draining me, Chance."
"I don't want you near me."
"Don't TOUCH me!"
"I should never have had kids."
"Go get it yourself."
"Ugh. Let me do it. MOVE."
"Whatever."
"Get off of me. Just go. Go to your room."
"You are stressing me out."
"Goddammit, why? Why are you here right now?!"

I ate myself sick often as a child. Beyond childhood. Between trying to be quiet and sense her moods, I developed a passive self hatred and empathy large enough to swallow an elephant. Survival techniques to better sense her moods and navigate around them however I could.

She didn't mean to hurt or ruin me. It was her pain. Her own journey of emotional neglect and abuse that hurt so badly, it bled in to mine. Heavy inheritance to work through. I try to give myself the love and acceptance she simply could not. It feels wrong every time - like loving yourself is a selfish thing and selfishness is a dirty word. Self absorption. ICK.

But I've grown from depressive anxious to regulating these these moods on my own far better than I ever thought I could. Even played with anger which has been very useful, strangely. Mothering myself has been a exercise.

A couple of months ago, someone told me "Chance, you are not broken; your self perception is. Fix THAT. You don't need to be fixed." It has helped immensely.

But, I circle back 'round the rim now.

Because that - along with 6 months of focus - has also spun up this curiosity and awareness of all life areas. It's why I'm tormented now. Taking a hard at what I thought and felt were stable places. Unchanging anchorage.

Now I am adrift. Scared in the river again. No paddle and a branch threatening to make this a whole lot more REAL.

What about US? We are open about our situation. I can't seem to stop crying.